Renny Yater's take on the Hollister Ranch and the origins of the Ranch-privileged Santa Barbara Surf Club originally appeared in the Summer 2002 issue of the Surfer's Journal, as part of much longer feature titled "Loner: California's Reclusive Trim Master, Reynolds Yater, Tells His Story." The text below has been slightly edited.

Here’s what happened up there. Clinton Hollister [grandson of Ranch founder William Hollister] was really a neat guy. He thought the people of Santa Barbara County should be able to use the Ranch area. There were different groups that wanted in up there. Bow and arrow hunting for deer, pig hunting, things like that. He’d say, “Yeah, you guys can come in and do that kind of thing. I don’t mind, as long as you don’t interrupt our cattle.’’ There was a group that was into diving. He’d say, “Fine, come in and use it."

Then surfers began showing up [in the late '50s], and the cowboys who were running cattle didn’t care. It was insignificant, like two or three surfers a year. It wasn’t an impact at all until some guys started vandalizing. I'm not going to tell you who it was, but they started vandalizing the railroad shacks. There was a shack Drakes and another at San Augustine. Clinton saw that and said, “Aw, these surfers, I don’t think we want them on the Ranch.”

So [some local surfers] found out about it and we personally went to Clinton and explained that this problem wasn’t generated by us here in Santa Barbara. This happened because of out-of-town guys. Doing that kind of stuff was the trend then, to leave your mark, it was like the graffiti of that era. So he said, “OK, if you guys want to come in here, I want you to police yourselves. I want you to get a guard at the gate. Stop the guys from coming in who shouldn't be up here. That means you gotta have a club. I want you to have your own liability insurance, too, so I’m not responsible if anybody gets hurt.”

We said, “OK, we’ll do it.” We had one hell of a time getting 20 guys together. That’s how few surfers there were. And also, they had to each come up with $25, for the insurance policy. Then we found a retired guy, bought a trailer, and he agreed to live in it. That was the first Hollister Ranch gate guard and the establishment of the club right there.

Figuring out the waves at the Ranch was really interesting to me. The summer surf was at the north end, and the winter surf was down below. There was morning sickness a lot of times, with fog and low tide in the summer up at Cojo. Not any good. Then in the afternoon, it would be a completely different kind of day. The wind turned around, the tide came in—it just turned into a different place. Learning all that kind of stuff took time. It was wide open in the early ’60s. We’d be up there for days at a time and never see another living soul.

Then it got popular, and we opened the club up to 100 members. There was a big waiting list. You had to be a local resident. We policed it pretty well, of course, and that caused a lot of animosity with other surfers. They felt it was unfair. Well, there was a reason. It was that [start a club and abide by the rules], or nobody was going in at all.

Meanwhile, during that period, commercial abalone diving was really big up there. Guys would leave skiffs anchored offshore at Little Drakes, swim out to them in the morning, dive abalone, motor in and off-load them on the beach there, then drive their catch all the way back to Santa Barbara to the processor. There were two or three guys doing that.

George Greenough started fishing lobsters on the Ranch by himself. He fished up there by himself out of a 13’ Boston Whaler the first year. I knew he was doing it, and I was down here doing my thing out of the [Santa Barbara] harbor. We got together the next year. Clinton didn't mind. "I don’t care," he said. "Just don’t make a mess.” So George and I both fished the Conception area. I used a little skiff built by Dale Woodard down in Cardiff. They were real light; you could beach-launch them and we worked off the beach, right there at Little Drakes, all winter. We each had our own string of less than a hundred traps. We did that for two years. Sometimes George and I would get together in the morning and go up in one car. Lots of times I’d go up and stay overnight, work a couple of days, then come back. George went there and back every day. We both had four-wheel-drive trucks. It was hard to get in there during winter before the road was paved, but we did it, and it was very productive for a few years. We'd give the Ranch people lobsters, no charge, and everything was cool. It was a great relationship. This was 1964-'65, and surf-wise, we'd be up there all day and never see a soul. Maybe we’d see one car of surfers drive up the beach in a week. It was no big deal. On the days when it was just too big to get the boats off the beach, we’d go up and just surf. That was a really neat era. Then Macco bought the property and stopped all of that. No more fishing. It came to an end, as every good deal does.

[Photos: John Severson, George Greenough]

"WE'D BE UP THERE FOR DAYS AT A TIME AND NEVER SEE ANOTHER LIVING SOUL," RENNY YATER TALKS ABOUT THE RANCH (2002)

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos